BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Federal authorities say a Louisiana psychiatrist has been sentenced to more than seven years in prison for his role in a Medicare fraud scheme.
The Justice Department says Dr. Zahid Imran was sentenced Monday for his role in the $258 million scheme. The department says the scheme included falsified patient treatment records reflecting services when no such services were provided.
Imran was a medical director for Shifa Community Mental Health Center of Baton Rouge, and co-owned Serenity Center of Baton Rouge and Shifa Community Mental Health Center of Texas.
Federal prosecutors have said hundreds of people were bused into Baton Rouge from Memphis, Tennessee, and other locations to attend therapy sessions at Shifa and Serenity Center in Baton Rouge.
The clinics took advantage of the elderly, drug addicts and chronically mentally ill people by providing them with no services, inadequate services and clinically inappropriate services, prosecutors have said.
Hoor Naz Jafri, 54, of Baton Rouge, who was part owner of the two Baton Rouge clinics and the Texas clinic, was sentenced last week to more than eight years in federal prison and ordered to repay more than $43 million to the federal government.
Imran and Jafri were two of 17 people convicted in the wide-ranging probe that began in 2011.
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